In mine and underground as well as surface excavation, various mobile mining machines, such as rock drilling rigs, loading and transport equipment, are employed. The rock drilling rigs are used for drilling and excavating various mining tunnels in the rock. A rock material, e.g. ore material, formed in underground excavation during rock drilling has to be removed from the mine. For the removal of the rock material, rail transport or increasingly popular railless removal suitable for several targets of use and carried out by mining machines may be used. Surface excavation, too, presents various transport needs relating to removal of excavated rock material.
Mining machines employed in the removal of rock material are loading and transport equipment. In mine and underground excavation, the most common loading equipment includes LHD (Load Haul Dump) loaders or dump trucks that load the rock material from an excavation into their bucket and transport it further to a loading point. In the loading point of the mine, the LHD loaders load the rock material to a crusher, transport wagon, conveyor belt or to railless transport equipment, such as a dump truck.
Transport equipment designed for mines and underground excavation are common mining machines used for railless removal of rock material. Typical transport equipment includes articulated or fixed-body transport equipment. Typically, prior art articulated transport equipment is two-axle or three-axle transport equipment, and their body is typically provided with one centre articulation rotating about a vertical axle. Typically, the prior art fixed-body transport equipment is three-axle or more-than-three-axle transport equipment wherein one or more of the axles are steering axles.
In mine and underground excavation, the transport equipment is expected to have a great load-bearing capacity in order to be able to remove the rock material as effectively as possible. On the other hand, the transport equipment is to be designed such that it can conveniently move and turn in the relatively narrow mining tunnels.
A disadvantage of the current prior art transport equipment solutions is thus that their load-bearing capacity is not sufficient in relation to the space required for turning in a mining tunnel. In addition, the stability of the prior art transport equipment is poor, particularly with heavier loads. The prior art transport equipment, upon being turned, may topple in a jack-knife position. Further, in the prior art transport equipment, the body structure should be designed separately for differently-sized transport equipment, and it is impossible to utilize similar body structures in transport equipment having different bearing capacities.
In mine and underground as well as surface excavation, a clear need and demand thus exist for novel transport equipment solutions which enable a sufficient load-bearing capacity to be achieved and the space required for turning in a mining tunnel to be reduced.